Unregistered, as a new member your first 5 posts will be subject to moderation.
So if your post is submitted successfully, but does not show up immediately, please be patient, as it may take some time for a moderator to approve it.
Please don't double post.

I'm getting tired of not having any people to talk about this and I'm
feeling I need to let out some ideas before I can really move on.

Some back story: I'm 30 years old and I have been thirteen years with L
as my girlfriend, around our third year together I cheated on her and
after a while I got caught and that led to all the bad stuff that
comes with cheating. With a lot of work we managed to overcome that
obstacle and continue our relationship yet that experience left me
with a lot of doubts and some ideas. That was long ago and we are very
well pass it.

BTW, I want to make some kind of warning: I tend to write only from my
point of view as it's the only pow that I can speak with
confidence. About everyone else involved I have my impressions and the
effort I put together listening and trying to figure out their
feelings and intentions, but I wouldn't dare to speak in their behalf.

Three years ago I cheated L again with N, but this time it was
different, I really cared about both of them and my relationship with
N had been brewing for a long time, it had been mostly platonic but
one trip gave us the opportunity to act on it. I knew that I had
screwed badly again, but I realized that I needed to do something
different this time and I was so ill prepared for what I was feeling
at the moment. I did what I tought right and faced L as soon as I
could; it was as painful as I remembered, we were living together
already and we separated for about three months before deciding to
keep going. As expected my cheating was rooted on a host of problems
that had been boiling for years and it was time to face them.

Meanwhile I started learning about polyamory and found a framework
that better fitted my feelings and the possibility of working
something out. One reads again and again the impossibilities of
working anything out of a cheat scenario but I decided to take the
risk. I decided to face my feelings and hide nothing from them and
prepare for a rough time.

With L I spoke how I needed to change and redefine the structure of
our relationship, that I needed to study and educate me better on how
to face the reality I was living at the moment, to understand my
feelings and find my path. We faced the fact that even if we decided
to continue our relationship the transition could mean the end of
it. This process actually was like opening a can of worms, we had been
together for so long that we had ignored so many problems, we had been
together and grown together but our relationship sheltered us from
maturing in many many aspects.

With N, we studied polyamory together and I told her that I really
cared about L and I had to give it a try. With we thought N we could
work something out. I told N that I wasn't going to expect her to wait
for me to solve my issues with L, and that It might take years before
a real poly relationship could be formed. She agreed and for a while
our process continued.

From there, It was a painful path, I made so many mistakes, my work
life and decisions added a lot of stress to my relationships. But bit
by bit during two years we managed to place a foundation for a poly
relationship.

In that time,me and L managed to explore a lot of our undeveloped
personalities and L even had some flings of her own, also she managed
to connect lot more with her friends and overall her self steem got an
awesome boost. It has been an amazing process that I have been able to
witness and be rewarded with the luck of love and being loved by
awesome woman that got even more awesome after all of this.

Meanwhile my relationship with N advanced, we got sexual before it was
agreed with L and that setus back a lot but this time I had been more
realistic on my expectations of myself and this event wasn't as hard
as it could. At first I spent a lot of time with N as we worked
together and lived very near. N moved to her own, and started living
alone. Then I quitted the job we shared, I had to move to other part
of the city and we weren't spending as much time together, yet the
time we were sharing was much more intimate.

At first my time with N felt a lot like cheating, and I acted like
that, almost everyone acted that way... it took me almost two years to
get into that natural feeling of being with N. One trait of N that I
think it became the demise of everything is that she kept everything
to herself, she took on the role of helping me fix everything with L
and got in a state of mind of self sacrifice. I tried so many things
to prevent that, so many angles... yet my decisions binded me, I
wanted to keep my relationship with L and neither of us was prepared.

On the other hand we managed to spend a lot of time all the three of
us together. At first it was very awkward but with time it became more
natural and a few times and during very brief moments I experienced
the joy of seeing both of them smiling and sharing our life without
the burden of all our stories. One time I fought with L about N while
we were out with us to a bar, I was driving so I went to sleep to the
car while they went out and to cool off the fight. When I woke up to
pickup L and N, something had happened and L and N were kissing and
then both of them kissed me at the same time... my head exploded. It
took the best of me to drive "safely" while they went crazy in the
backseat. I had a mind boggling experience having sex with both of
them at the same time, and it felt right. After a while they both
shared with me all the things they didn't like from the experience and
the next time I tried to fix most of them, yet some of the biggest
problems had taken hold of them by that time.

N didn't fight, N didn't complain, she was always "ok". Ok of me not
going out with her this time, ok of missing this movie because of my
schedule, ok of living alone... and even proud. Yet she was never ok,
she was being hurt and I don't know what she was waiting to do
something about it.

My life took a serious change about 10 months ago, when I accepted a
job offer in another city far away from both of them. Before accepting
we discussed everything at length and both of them agreed that it was
a good opportunity and it was the opportunity of finally tear down the
primary/secondary that sometimes was so abusive with N, even when N
almost never complained or demanded anything.

The first time N visited me in the new city she started speaking of
wishing a monogamic relationship with me and I had to stop her, I told
her that I wouldn't go back to that ever and that I really love L so
that was not going to happen. After a while I went back to my former
city and there we a discussion that became the beginning of the
end. She was pressing me about moving together and while I said that I
wanted that it wasn't the time of doing that, we barely had started
having our relationship free of the burden of the past mistakes, the
pain of the cheat had finally faded enough for L so she wasn't a
obstacle anymore and she was supporting me now. Also I was living
alone, something I had never done before and I was liking it a lot.

The next time she visited me she came to breakup with me, I talked her
out of it but the gears were in motion.

After four months after that, I moved my four dogs and all of my
things to the new city and that meant that L had free pass to stay
with me as long as she wanted, she now lives with me but goes back to
the old city for long periods when her business requires her. At the
same time N started on a new job, one she says to hate.

Her new job seemed to be a living hell but I couldn't figure out why
she only complained and never did anything to mend the situation she
was living.

After these events my relationship with N started to erode, I fought
hard to keep N, even pushed harder against L to tear down most of the
remaining obstacles against my relationship with N, but N was already
drifting apart.

N began to become apathetic and uninterested, and when I complained
she told me that she had to endure that at the beginning of our
relationship and it made her mad that I pressed her for attention.

Soon after she(N) told me about this guy from the work that attracted
her, and she was willing now to give him a chance, but that our
relationship was a obstacle to that. I discovered that after I moved
here, she started hiding our relationship and for many people it was
over. I remember her saying to me that this guy or any guy was never
going to take her seriously while she was in a relationship with me.

I ignored all the unsettling things she told me and still encouraged
her to see if this guy could work for her, this seemed to enrage her.

Anyway with all of this on my mind I kept trying but then L became a
major problem for N: "L is the woman you want to be with, but I don't"

I guess I'm stubborn, after all I had faced so many shit with L and
overcome it. I really thought that I could do anything, but the pain
had been festering for so long... I saw it coming, I feared it and
still don't know if I could do anything about it.

In the final interactions with N we only did by text, and when I
pressured her to solve the issues she exposed she quit the
conversation and then tried to act as if there wasn't any problem and
that I had to live with her decisions and do her bidding. I kept
pressing around the real problems but I never got a direct answer and
every time I enraged her a bit more.